IDC: 1 out of every 2 phones sold in India used to be made by Nokia, now it’s 1 out of 3

For all the doom and gloom Nokia is facing from the press and analysts about their failure to compete in the high end smartphone space, you’d think that the only part of the market where Nokia was doing alright, the low and mid end, would surely be keeping the company afloat and on good terms with investors. IDC is casting doubt on that age old assumption, saying that at the end of 2009 Nokia models used to make up 54% of all devices sold in India. That’s astonishing. Grab any two Indian people off the street, and the chances that one of them has a Nokia is high. That number however has fallen to a still respectable 36.3% by the end of June 2010. Now such a high market share is still a good thing to have, but to drop almost 20% in share in just 6 months is a little troubling.

Nokia isn’t taking too kind to IDC’s research however, saying: “The figures are way off the mark. They are not correct,” Nokia India managing director D Shivakumar told The Economic Times. “Nokia continues to do well in India across all segments.” Further adding: “According to IDC, the dual-SIM category accounted for 38.5% of the overall market. As per our estimates, the dual-SIM segment represents 22% of the Indian handset market currently”. Nokia says that IDC is not counting mobiles coming out of their factory in Chennai either.

IDC, annoyed that Nokia thinks they can’t add, subtract, and multiply, said: “In India we have been in this business for six years, while globally, we have been engaged in tracking handset sales for 10 years. We stick by our numbers.” – Vishaal Bhatnagar, associate vice-president at IDC India.

All we know is that Nokia’s Q3 numbers are due to be announced not this coming Thursday, but the Thursday after; the 21st. Nokia’s numbers don’t lie, and market share, at the end of the day, doesn’t matter if you’re not highly profitable. We’ll be paying close attention to this one.